Paul Bayliss, the leader of Derby City Council, said he was delighted at the research findings.

He said: "Derby is fast becoming a top destination for events, shopping, history and culture and a great place to stay for the nationally significant attractions on our doorstep, including the glorious Peak District and Derbyshire."

Mr Bayliss added the figures showed the council was right to invest in huge projects such as the multi-sport arena now being built at Pride Park.

He said: "Developing and delivering our visitor economy strategy is key to creating a thriving, sustainable economy for Derby, bringing more visitors to spend in local businesses.

"Now more than ever, it is crucial that we continue to invest in Derby's tourism offer. The new arena will offer state-of-the-art sporting, exhibition and concert facilities, which I am confident will further stimulate our visitor economy."

The increase in the number of people visiting Derby is highlighted by the number searching for information about the city on the internet.

In 2011, the www.visitderby. co.uk website saw a 41% increase in users compared with the previous year.

Visits to the site are still growing, demonstrating an rising interest in the city.

Over 8,000 subscribers have signed up to the Visit Derby e-shot to receive regular news.

When the Olympic Torch came to the city, the website received the largest number of hits in any one day – 3,176.

Of the non-Derby residents who were monitored, 13% were from Europe, 6% from North America, 5% from Australasia and 3% from Asia.

Of the remaining users not from Derby, 30% were from the Midlands and 38% from elsewhere in the UK.

John Forkin, the managing director of Marketing Derby, said that it was very welcoming news that more people were visiting the city.

He said: "The figures are very reassuring and show that we are heading in the right direction. We still have a long way to go as a city but we are getting there.

"And these figures show that we are doing it right.

"Over the last few years, Derby has welcomed some great new retail and leisure venues, like Quad, hotels and the Westfield Centre.

"Quad is visited by 300,000 people each year and Westfield has 25 million visitors, all coming from far and wide.

"There are many, many hotels that have started up, opening up another 500 beds in the city alone, many of which are occupied each night.

"Derby is a city moving in the right direction, giving people from across the country something different to come and visit.

"We have a lot of heritage to be proud of and want to share that with the whole country."

Comments

This article has to be the biggest work of fiction since the complete works of Charles Dickens were published. Anybody with the ability to think at all would not contemplate coming to a parochial backwater like Derby.

In 1860 all of the railways were privately owned and the competition between railway companies kept the prices down. It cost one shilling to travel to the Great Exhibition in 1851, the average cotton mill worker was earning two shillings per day at the time and 6.2 million people travelled to London for the Great Exhibition:
http://tinyurl.com/cbtatp9
Derby was a centre of commerce and industry throughout the period and it was an industrial exhibition at the Derby Mechanics Institution that inspired Prince Albert, during a visit to Derby, to propose the Great Exhibition of 1851.
Charles Dickens, Johan Strauss senior, Handel and Lizt all performed or spoke to crwods of Derbians at the Mechanucs Institution during the late 1800s.
I have a newspaper cutting from 1965 with a report by the Derby town council stating that Derby does not need tourists wandering around our streets as we have nothing for them to see. Funny how things change through history!

How where these people measured?
In derby we have several large multinational companies, Rolls, Toyota etc
Many of these are likely to be here on business
Ok so it's all money and exposure but there is a great deal of spin in the article suggesting these visitors are 'tourists'
I'm currently away on business, I wouldn't say I'm a tourist, in fact where I am now is the last place on earth I would visit as a tourist! (even worse than Derby!)
Who are these experts and economists and how did tey record these visitor numbers?
Indeed the figures could even include people that live on the outskirts, south Derbyshire, long eaton, Ilkeston for example that regularly pop into Derby for an evening meal

Nice story DB. But do you realise how much it costs to travel by train to Derby from London, Bath or Glasgow since the privatisation of the railways? It's little wonder that few people make the journey in the modern age.

During the 1860s hundreds of special trains were laid on to bring tens of thousands of tourists to Derby to watch big shows at the Derby Arboretum. I have a poster which gives a list of cities people would travel from, and they included cities from as far afield as Bristol to Glasgow, Birmingham, London and Bath.
One of the shows was "the Great Blondin" famous for his death defying tight rope walk over Niagra Falls, who came to Derby to show his acrobatic skills. Then we had Buffalo Bill who brought his Wild West show to the Race Course, where people travelled hundreds of miles to see Annie Oakley and Geronimo perform their wild west acts with Bill Cody. Derby was one of the most popular visitor attractions in the UK during this period and not a sign of Westfield or any supermarkets!